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Thursday, March 17, 2016

I rather enjoy abstract questions, giving my mind something big to ponder, but more and more I’ve found that it’s the small concrete questions and observations that are significant and add up to something. The big questions fill in with what's small.

Here’s a wonderful passage from an old book on my shelf: The Art of Clear Thinking by Rudolf Flesch, published in 1951.

“Next time you find yourself wrestling with such a question, stop and translate it into a low-level, concrete question to which you can find an answer. Instead of “What is the meaning of life?” ask yourself “What did I do today, and for what purpose?” Instead of “What knowledge is of most worth?” ask “What did I learn last year and how did I apply it?” And when it comes to the question “What is truth?”, remember that our civilization has developed an elaborate procedure to establish the truth about things and events, namely, a court trial. Yet, no witness has ever been asked to answer the question “What is truth?” More likely, he is asked: “Now tell us exactly what you did between 3:30 and 4:30 on the afternoon of August 4, 1947?”

[Photo: taken of some cuttings from a spruce tree in our yard, which have been in a vase in my kitchen for nearly a month and are now showing new spring-green growth fluffing out from the tips. There must be some sort of natural antibiotic in them because the water remains crystal clear.]

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

"There are only two courses of thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is: What am I to do this next moment?–or tonight, or tomorrow? And the other: What did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert, the horse, the winds, woman, amber, fishes, wine?"

Isak Dinesen, from "The Dreamers" in Seven Gothic Tales

~~~

[Photo: yet another taken recently at the American Swedish Institute, from the ceiling of a playhouse set up for children. This photo reminds me of this companion post from nearly a year ago, "Beyond the Roof of the Stars." I hope you'll click and add that to your day's reading as well.]

The interviews have some overlap in a couple questions – both want to know where the book started and what's my quibble with the famous Buechner line ("“the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet") – but both spread out in different directions and cover unique territory.

Both interviews ask questions about things that perhaps you've been thinking about also, such as keeping your eyes open for the movement of God in your work life, even in, and maybe particularly in, work's shadow side.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Released this past April, Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison is the latest winner of Graywolf Press's nonfiction prize. I love that it boldly declares itself to be a collection of essays. Essay writers who want to publish are typically told to avoid the word at all costs because publishers typically avoid the form. Not Graywolf Press.

Here's what the copy on Graywolf's website says about Empathy Exams:

Beginning with her experience as a medical actor, paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison’s visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about one another? How can we feel another’s pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other?

Big questions. The kind worth spending time with on the page.

I went to Jamison's reading on the evening of her book launch at Common Good Books in St. Paul. She was lovely and articulate. I bought the book and have been reading the essays, savoring them. The first essay, the title essay, starts with Jamison evaluating herself, even as a medical actor she is evaluating medical students, on the personal capacity for empathy. I'm not finished with the book yet but I'm getting the definite impression as I proceed that the essays are also turning their focus, testing the empathy of the reader.

Friday, June 03, 2005

The latest issue of Critique magazine includes a review and discussion questions for the movie Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle. You can also read it online here.Critique movie reviews and discussion questions are a great resource if you are a person that is trying to be a discerning thinker about issues of faith and culture.

The following question from Critique about Hotel Rwanda appears to be a fruitful one: "Discuss Paul Rusesabagina's heroism. How was it manifested? How does it compare to the "Super-heroism" of films like Superman, Batman, or Spiderman? How does it compare to Christian notions of heroism?" The review contains many additional thought-provoking questions.

I feel a bit hypocritical, however, recommending you read this review and consider the discussion questions it contains because I haven't yet seen Hotel Rwanda myself. What's more, given a choice a couple weeks ago between this and another movie, I chose to see The Interpreter starring Sean Pean and Nicole Kidman. I feel a self-inflicted stab of conviction even as I write this. I felt the same stab as I read a recent post about the movie on Jed Anderson's blog, the inner ring, as well. Therefore, I will pledge to find a theatre in which it is still playing, or rent it if is already out on video/DVD, and see it without undue delay.

“Far from my high school daydreams about the future, I am on a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread, for living rather than dying. I want to cast my net on the side of astonishment.... I want to find God at work in me and through me. I want livelihood.

Livelihood: the word gathers up and bundles together the simultaneous longings for meaning, satisfaction, and provision. In the fullest sense of the word, livelihood means the way of one’s life; it means the sustenance to make that way possible; it means both body and soul are fully alive thanks to what has been earned or received by grace. On one level we make our livelihood; on another level we keep our eyes open and find it.”

–Nancy J. Nordenson, Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure (Kalos Press)

By day I'm a medical writer. After hours I do another kind of work. Creative writing, spiritual writing, essaying. This blog arises from those after hours. I write about work/vocation, meaning, hope, imagination, faith, science, creativity/writing, books, and anything else I feel the impulse to write about. I hope these short posts provide camaraderie for your own creative and spiritual life.